David Davies: Life after Fulmer – so far

Some of the Fulmer Companies were bought by BNF on the assumption (a flight of fancy by BNF director Ken Brightman) that the disruption of the merger could be funded by a sale of land at Wantage Business Park. Bill Bowyer became joint MD of the merged BNF-Fulmer. He and I among many Fulmer staff transferred to Wantage. I had the thankless task of reconciling Terms and Conditions between Fulmer and BNF – two contrasting cultures (alive and dead).

There never was a sale of land at Wantage. In 1992 The Bank pulled the plug. Receivers were appointed. They treated the staff with callous disregard.

I bought the computer department from the receivers, set up a company called Questans Ltd and rented half a building on the Wantage site. Our main source of income was a product called STRIDE, a Thesaurus Management package with a couple of dozen users paying annual maintenance, including big organizations like DHSS and MAFF and a couple of police forces.

STRIDE died because of Google and its like. Searches became so fast and cheap that crude trial and error became much easier and cheaper than maintaining databases of synonyms, broader terms and narrower terms. Questans Limited had a long lingering death, from five people to just me retreating to my home at Henley. At least I avoided the bloody receivers (not that I’m bitter).